Core Record

Couturier painted many attractive farmyard scenes, of which five are in the collections of the Bowes Museum. His lively and skilful drawing gives character to his depiction of farmyard animals. Pictures of poultry were fashionable in seventeenth-century Dutch art (for instance with Melchior de Hondecoeter), but Couturier's style is a lot more naturalistic, emphasising the animal's activity and the décor surrounding them. The splashes of colour provided by the cocquerel's combs and feathers, as well as the bright yellows from the straw, provide attractive elements for the eye, whilst the stone step and the walls appear to set the scene in an old, picturesque farm.

Current Accession Number

B.M.317

Former Accession Number

No. 517

Inscription

front lr 'P.L. Couturier'

Subject

animal (hens, cocquerel, ducks, chicks)

Measurements

55 x 47.5 cm (estimate)

Material

oil on canvas

Acquisition Details

Bequeathed by the founders John and Joséphine Bowes 1885.

Notes

This was listed as no. 517in John Bowes's catalogue as A Poultry Yard, Léon Couturier, Living in 1883. A couple of seventeenth-century artists were particularly interested in farmyard animals: Nicasius Bernaerts (Flemish, seventeenth-century), Melchior de Hondecoeter (Dutch, seventeenth-century). The approximate dates given to this painting correspond to Couturier's first Salon exhibition (1845), and to the year when John Bowes virtually stopped collecting.